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Category: Psychology

The Nazi-fighting women of the Jewish resistance

The Nazi-fighting women of the Jewish resistance

Judy Batalion writes: In 1943, Niuta Teitelbaum strolled into a Gestapo apartment on Chmielna Street in central Warsaw and faced three Nazis. A 24-year-old Jewish woman who had studied history at Warsaw University, Niuta was likely now dressed in her characteristic guise as a Polish farm girl with a kerchief tied around her braided blond hair. She blushed, smiled meekly and then pulled out a gun and shot each one. Two were killed, one wounded. Niuta, however, wasn’t satisfied. She…

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Martin Luther rewired your brain

Martin Luther rewired your brain

Joseph Henrich writes: Your brain has been altered, neurologically re-wired as you acquired a particular skill. This renovation has left you with a specialized area in your left ventral occipital temporal region, shifted facial recognition into your right hemisphere, reduced your inclination toward holistic visual processing, increased your verbal memory, and thickened your corpus callosum, which is the information highway that connects the left and right hemispheres of your brain. What accounts for these neurological and psychological changes? You are…

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We live in a wake-centric world out of touch with our dreams

We live in a wake-centric world out of touch with our dreams

Rubin Naiman writes: In the Old Testament, Jacob, on the run for his life from the twin brother he betrayed, beds down for the night in the wilderness and there dreams of a ladder stretching between heaven and Earth, of angels ascending and descending, and of God assuring him of an auspicious future. With his head on a pillow of stone – symbolic of matter in its densest form – Jacob dreams of a structure linking the material and ethereal…

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Being kind to others is good for your health

Being kind to others is good for your health

Marta Zaraska writes: Newspapers started writing about Betty Lowe when she was 96 years old. Despite being long past retirement age, she was still volunteering at a cafe at Salford Royal Hospital in Greater Manchester, UK, serving coffee, washing dishes and chatting to patients. Then Lowe turned 100. “Still volunteers at hospital”, the headlines ran. Then she reached 102 and the headlines declared: “Still volunteering”. The same again when she turned 104. Even at 106, Lowe would work at the…

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People depolarize after elections as their attachment to their preferred political party weakens

People depolarize after elections as their attachment to their preferred political party weakens

PsyPost reports: Affective polarization — one’s level of animosity towards political rivals – tends to decline in the wake of elections, according to new research that examined data from 42 countries. The study, published in the journal Electoral Studies, indicates that this depolarization is partially the result of citizens becoming less strongly attached to political parties over time. “Affective polarization is one of the main concerns for the health and quality of contemporary democracies. Some polarization may be beneficial for…

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Trump’s coronavirus response looks heroic to many white men

Trump’s coronavirus response looks heroic to many white men

Olga Khazan writes: Kurtis, a young accountant in McKinney, Texas, likes the thing that many people hate about Donald Trump: that the president has left the pandemic response almost entirely up to local officials. “He left it up to each state to make their own decision on how they wanted to proceed,” Kurtis told me recently. Most experts think the absence of a national strategy for tackling the coronavirus has been a disaster. But Kurtis argues that North Dakota, for…

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The value of uncertainty

The value of uncertainty

Mark Miller et al write: Understanding our own relationship with uncertainty has never been more important, for we live in unusually challenging times. Climate change, COVID-19 and the new order of surveillance capitalism make it feel as if we are entering a new age of global volatility. Where once for many in the West there were just pockets of instability (deep unpredictability) in a sea of reliability – albeit sometimes in disagreeable structures and expectations – it lately seems as…

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Politics is visceral

Politics is visceral

Manos Tsakiris writes: We live in bodies that feel increasingly unsafe. Pandemics, climate change, sexual assault, systemic racism, the pressures of gig-economy jobs, the crisis of liberal democracy – these phenomena create feelings of vulnerability that are, quite literally, visceral. They’re visceral in the sense that emotional experience arises from how our physiological organs – from our guts and lungs to our hearts and hormonal systems – respond to an everchanging world. They’re also political, in that our feelings affect…

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Humans aren’t inherently selfish – we’re actually hardwired to work together

Humans aren’t inherently selfish – we’re actually hardwired to work together

Franzi/Shutterstock By Steve Taylor, Leeds Beckett University There has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish. We’re apparently ruthless, with strong impulses to compete against each other for resources and to accumulate power and possessions. If we are kind to one another, it’s usually because we have ulterior motives. If we are good, it’s only because we have managed to control and transcend our innate selfishness and brutality. This bleak view of human nature is closely…

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Mitochondria may hold keys to anxiety and mental health

Mitochondria may hold keys to anxiety and mental health

Elizabeth Landau writes: Carmen Sandi recalls the skepticism she faced at first. A behavioral neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, she had followed a hunch that something going on inside critical neural circuits could explain anxious behavior, something beyond brain cells and the synaptic connections between them. The experiments she began in 2013 showed that neurons involved in anxiety-related behaviors showed abnormalities: Their mitochondria, the organelles often described as cellular power plants, didn’t work well —…

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Love is medicine for fear

Love is medicine for fear

Arthur C. Brooks writes: We are living in a time of fear. The coronavirus pandemic has threatened our lives, health, and economy in ways most Americans have never experienced. We have no idea what the future will bring. According to the American Psychological Association’s annual “Stress in America” survey, the percentage of people in the U.S. who say that “the future of our nation is a significant source of stress” rose to 83 percent in June 2020, up from 63…

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Coronavirus responses highlight how humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

Coronavirus responses highlight how humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

The more politicized an issue, the harder it is for people to absorb contradictory evidence. Drew Angerer/Getty Images News via Getty Images By Adrian Bardon, Wake Forest University Bemoaning uneven individual and state compliance with public health recommendations, top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci recently blamed the country’s ineffective pandemic response on an American “anti-science bias.” He called this bias “inconceivable,” because “science is truth.” Fauci compared those discounting the importance of masks and social distancing to “anti-vaxxers” in their…

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The role of cognitive dissonance in the pandemic

The role of cognitive dissonance in the pandemic

Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris write: Members of Heaven’s Gate, a religious cult, believed that as the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth in 1997, a spaceship would be traveling in its wake—ready to take true believers aboard. Several members of the group bought an expensive, high-powered telescope so that they might get a clearer view of the comet. They quickly brought it back and asked for a refund. When the manager asked why, they complained that the telescope was defective,…

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Lethargic global response to COVID-19: How the human brain’s failure to assess abstract threats cost us dearly

Lethargic global response to COVID-19: How the human brain’s failure to assess abstract threats cost us dearly

The Trump administration was not alone with its slow response to the COVID-19 crisis. Getty Images / White House Pool By Arash Javanbakht, Wayne State University and Cristian Capotescu, University of Michigan More U.S. citizens have confirmed COVID-19 infections than the next five most affected countries combined. Yet as recently as mid-March, President Trump downplayed the gravity of the crisis by falsely claiming the coronavirus was nothing more than seasonal flu, or a Chinese hoax, or a deep state plot…

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Do people become more selfless as they age?

Do people become more selfless as they age?

The main characters of ‘The Good Place’ become better over time. Michael Tran/FilmMagic via Getty Images By Ulrich Mayr, University of Oregon Looking for something to binge-watch while you’re hunkering down at home? Consider checking out the popular TV show “The Good Place.” Over four recently concluded seasons, the series follows the adventures and mishaps of four utterly self-centered characters on their quest to become decent and selfless human beings. The deeper question this philosophy-laced comedy raises is: Can people…

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In battling the coronavirus, will ‘optimistic bias’ be our undoing?

In battling the coronavirus, will ‘optimistic bias’ be our undoing?

Unless danger is flashing before us, we view risks through rose-colored glasses. slavemotion/iStock via Getty Images By Marie Helweg-Larsen, Dickinson College As the coronavirus has fanned across the globe, some people have been more complacent about the risk of contracting the virus than others. On March 21, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was apoplectic after photographs emerged of New Yorkers congregating in parks, apparently ignoring mandates for social distancing. “It’s insensitive, it’s arrogant, it’s self-destructive, it’s disrespectful and it has…

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